Are you looking to boost your WooCommerce sales and grow your online store? Regardless of whether you’ve just launched your site or you have an established online business, if you want to improve conversion rate and generate more sales and revenue, you need to optimize your site. Here we’ll have a look at some tips and plugins that will help you take your online store to the next level.

If you have some knowledge of eCommerce, you probably know that with a market share of 27% among the top 1 million sites that use eCommerce technologies, WooCommerce is the most popular platform for online stores. This plugin provides flexibility and powerful tools. However, if you want to stand out from your competition you need to optimize your site as much as possible. By doing so you can provide users with a better experience which will increase your conversions, help you sell more, and generate more revenue.

Distribution in the top 1 million websites using eCommerce technologies

Even if your KPIs are working well, you need to keep improving your online store because even if you don’t, your competitors will. That’s why to be a step ahead, we’ll have a look at the best plugins and tips to increase customer engagement and boost your WooCommerce sales and conversions effectively.

How to boost WooCommerce sales

1) Shorten purchase process and save time

We all know that each extra step that the users make during the buying process increases the chances that they drop. That’s why reducing the steps as much as possible is key to succeed.

WooCommerce Direct is a plugin developed by QuadLayers that allows you to reduce the number of steps that the users make, simplifying the checkout process directing customers to the checkout page by skipping the shopping cart page. Fewer steps mean faster purchases improving user experience and, hence, conversion rates.

Another interesting feature is the possibility to include the cart form in the checkout page allowing customers to edit and confirm the order on the same page. Additionally, similar to what you see on Amazon or any other major eCommerce site, WooCommerce Direct comes with a quick purchase button to make the buy faster and simpler.

To improve conversions and reduce your server loads, avoiding excessive reloads of your site is key. Has it ever happened to you that you’re browsing an online store, you like something so you add it to your cart and then the site reloads? Isn’t it annoying? If the website doesn’t dynamically update the cart, not only does the buying process becomes slower but also the chances that the user drops increase.

That’s why the WooCommerce Ajax add to cart function is a must. This feature lets customers include single, grouped or variable products in the cart without needing to reload the entire site each time making the process smoother, faster and improving the overall experience.

WooCommerce Direct has both free and paid plans so you can choose the one that best suits your needs without spending a fortune.

Finally, there’s another great tool that helps you avoid steps and shorten the purchase process called QuadMenu. QuadMenu is a WordPress Mega Menu that lets you integrate the menu in your theme’s project, create mega menus, tab menus, and carrousel menus converting your existing menu into a powerful tool.

2) Discount Coupons

Discount coupons are another excellent option to increase your WooCommerce sales. With coupons, you can try to sell products where you have a lot of inventory, use some products as a hook to then do an upsell or cross-sell, apply it to your entire site or specific products/services, play with promotion duration, restrict it to new customers, referrals, or all of them, launch flash campaigns for one day to create a sense of urgency, and so on. The options are endless so you need to be smart and use coupons in the most effective way.

It’s true that coupons aren’t a magic solution. However, once you run a couple of promotions with coupons, you can leverage data from your past experiences and create attractive offers for your users.

One of the best tools for discount coupons is OptinMonster. This tool helps you increase engagement and convert visitors into subscribers and, ultimately, customers. There are different visual options and features to optimize your campaigns and increase conversion rates.

An important point is that as you’re in charge of distributing the coupons, you need to identify your target audience and segments. Get to know them as much as possible and run specific promotions with the right benefits or discounts using the right distribution channels for them.

Keep in mind that if you don’t know who you want to sell to, you won’t know what they need, what to offer them, and where to market your product or service so chances of running a successful promotion aren’t very high.

Always keep in mind that you’re selling products/services to your users. It sounds obvious but we tend to focus on ourselves instead of putting the attention on our potential customers.

3) Loyalty and Affiliate Programs

When we’re thinking about buying something and we know someone who has used that store or bought that product before, we tend to ask them to know how their experience was. This means word of mouth is probably the best marketing your brand and eCommerce site can have. One happy customer can influence a great number of potential buyers, the same way an unhappy one can do the exact opposite.

That’s why affiliate or loyalty programs are a great option not only to retain existing customers but also to attract new ones.

To create attractive loyalty programs you’ll need affiliates. Affiliates are partners who get a commission for marketing another company’s products. The secret here is to go for the right affiliates. It doesn’t make sense to have hundreds of partners if they don’t bring any qualified traffic or drive any sales. Quality is better than quantity so focus on getting affiliates with established authority and influence on your target audience.

Again, as we saw before, if you don’t know your audience, you won’t be able to find the right partner. So reward your customers for shopping at your WooCommerce store, provide them with value and make sure they return to get more points and recommend your product.

You can give discounts or free access to your premium products or offer them exclusive deals. If you’re just starting your loyalty program, WooRewards is a good option. If you want something more advanced, on the other hand, WooCommerce Points and Rewards plugin is an excellent choice.

Once you’ve created the loyalty plan, you have to create a marketing campaign to make sure you get the word out and let your existing and potential customers know the benefits you’re offering.

Other options to increase your WooCommerce sales include organizing a contest or special event, implementing a recovery cart for users that drop at some point in the process, or use retargeting.

Conclusion

All in all, there isn’t a unique recipe to optimize your store and increase your WooCommerce sales. There are a number of options and you’ll have to be creative and use the best combination that suits your needs. Therefore, you need to take into account your product or service, your means, and, especially, your target audience.

Remember that competition is fierce so if you don’t focus on providing value to your users, someone else will and your customers will become their customers.